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Make No Mistake, This is Harry Reid's Shutdown

Make no mistake, this is no longer a Washington where President Obama is always in charge. On Capitol Hill the man in charge is Harry Reid. No question about it.

President Obama has handed over the reins of leadership on government funding and the debt limit to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Reid is now fully in charge of his party’s negotiating strategy, a significant change from past showdowns with Republicans.

The Senate Majority Leader has always been a rough and tumble kind of guy, he is after all, a former boxer. Reid believes that if he doesn't back down in the shutdown and debt-ceiling fight, that he will force Republicans to cave and pass a "clean" CR and debt ceiling increase. Part of Reid's strategy is to hurl insults at Republicans surely hoping the media will repeat them to the point that it becomes ingrained in the public's mind.

The majority leader has brought a more pugnacious style to the debate, bashing House conservatives as “anarchists” and mocking the “Banana Republican mindset.”

The Senate Majority Leader has also chastised Ted Cruz for his 21-hour attack on Obamacare, saying that the Tea Party is holding the government hostage. Read that as, "You crazies don't do what you're told! Do what I tell you! Establishment Republicans do it and you should too."

Reid's bombastic assaults on House and Senate Republicans is also important for him where it matters most: getting reelected. Harry Reid will have to defend his Senate seat in 2016, a year that could prove tricky for him depending upon who the Republicans nominate for President. Should the GOP end up picking a rising star like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rand Paul or Marco Rubio, the Republican turnout in Nevada could be strong enough to scare Reid. By going to war now, Reid can help boost his campaign war chest and intimidate challengers from going after him.

Already, he’s begun seeking commitments from aides to stay with him through 2016. He’s spending more time fundraising everywhere from New York to Southern California. And he’s not afraid to issue a warning to a potential GOP opponent, Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada, who — if he’s reelected next year — will be in the middle of a second term in 2016.

“Hey listen, if he wants to run midterm, let him,” Reid told POLITICO. “I would remind him and everybody else that doesn’t work very well. Anytime anyone who is a governor leaves midterm, it just doesn’t work very well.”

A long line of Republican campaign groups will mount serious efforts to oust Reid, and he knows that by standing firm now and holding out for a win against the House and Senate GOP, he can lay the groundwork for a robust 2016 campaign cycle for him. He'll be able to marshal support from liberal groups everywhere when he reminds them that he stood for their tax, spend and control philosophy.

But we can't let the public forget: this is Harry Reid's shutdown. He owns it. When you read the bizarre stories of the World War II Memorial closure, restricting access to the ocean, suspending the Amber Alert system and more, don't let the media fool you.

Last month, Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Conn.) announced that he will not seek, and he will not accept, the nomination of his party for another term as governor. This is not all that surprising as he sits at at a 66 percent disapproval rating, tying him for the second highest disapproval rating of any governor.

We’re just days away from the expiration of funding for the federal government running dry, and that event that is spoken about only in hushed tones of dread by the Washington establishment: a government shutdown. For those who regard the federal government as the provider of all that is good and noble in the world, whose Life-of-Julia worldviews require state intervention in all activities great and small, this represents an unthinkable tragedy. The rest of us tend not to really notice, except when the Feds go out of their way to prevent World War II veterans from visiting their own, open air memorial.

This morning, I walked through the rain to work. After arriving at the office, I proceeded to make myself a cup of coffee and log on to my computer. The first thing I did was visit the Drudge Report to find out the big headline news today. What I found nearly made me throw my coffee at the computer screen.

Now that we're a little more than a week on from the government shutdown's start, Americans are a beginning to feel the effects of not having a bureaucratic nightmare breathing down their necks as they make all of their major life decisions. Can the governent breathe down our necks while the website that powers the government's own health care plan is still non-functional? Unfortunately, it can.

On today’s edition of the FreedomCast, Lachlan Markay joins me to discuss the shutdown theater: the selective closing of national monuments and park grounds, and why some websites such as Michelle Obama’s “Drink Up” campaign site were deemed essential during this partial shutdown, but others were not.

America deserves a strong leader during the government shutdown, not one who merely allows us to stumble along, doing whatever we want in the middle of the greatest crisis of all time. President Obama should take the threat to his credibility seriously, and not allow Americans to lose sight of the central role of government in their lives.

It’s as if current events are working together to reform education, or, at the very least, to make it evident to all Americans why reform needs to happen. Between the current government shutdown and the looming debt ceiling, it’s becoming more evident every day that the safest place for education is as far away from the federal government as possible.

Yesterday, it was noted that the AMBER Alert site run by the Department of Justice appeared to be the latest victim of the government shutdown. The AMBER Alert system instantly alerts local communities of child abductions. Attempting to check out the AMBER Alert site, results in this notification:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) responded to a question about funding for children's cancer research by asking, "Why would we do that?" Republicans pounced on the remark as evidence that Reid cared less for sick children than for his own partisan position. While Reid tried to recover from the gaffe, what he says he really meant was just as bad, or perhaps worse: he wanted to fund cancer trials, but wouldn't unless the House accepted everything else he wanted. In effect, he is holding every program hostage until he gets his way.